'The Magic' Bottle Cap Packaging Concept, Yea or Nay?

South Korean designer Sungi Kim recently sent over an intriguing concept for a bottle design with a built-in tablet dispenser. "Make sure you have clean, safe water and when desired, press the cap to release the hidden vitamin tablet and voila, simply magic."

It's an interesting take on water additives, and while my initial thought was that the pressurized container would preclude a push-top system (as in sealed jelly jars), but I suppose the solution would be to partially open the bottle and release the tablet, then reseal it and agitate as needed. However, our own hipstomp—a sometime packaging designer—has another concern:...what they've drawn up wouldn't work—if stacked in pallets for shipping, the weight of the bottles above would dispense the pills in the bottles below—I believe it's possible, with some kind of blisterpack integrated in a recessed way inside the cap. Though it might be prohibitively expensive. Then again, Japan has a reputation for creating expensive bottles, and I imagine South Korea probably keeps pace.

Ray is a contributor to Core77. Aside from design, his interests include art, music, cycling, urbanism, food, patterns, maps, coffee and em-dashes—seriously, he includes at least one in every post he writes.

8 Comments

Regarding the stacking problem (all other problems aside- like IP) Simply add a rim to the top of the lid that's higher than the tablet bulge. Then there's no way it can happen by mistake; only by pushing with a finger. It could even look a little like a chess rook so water doesn't collect on top of the lid if a leakage occur.

This idea of separating the flavor/vitamins from the water has been implemented for years now. Nothing new here except you're reporting on a concept that will never work. Why not discuss a steak knife for babies?
http://www.activatedrinks.com

...but if you want flavored water, why not just buy flavored water? Its not like you can switch the caps to choose a flavor before you buy. It looks cool, but it the end it just seems like a gimmick.
But then, so is the glass-ball push-cap found on a lot of Japanese sodas.

There is an entrepreneur, Bradley Friesen, who designed (and patented!) a screw cap that automatically dropped such a tablet into the water midway through the unscrewing motion. He brought it on "Dragon's Den," the Canadian equivalent of USA's "Shark Tank" competitive business game show.
It looked like a pretty promising concept when he showed it off, and I couldn't help but think this looks almost exactly like Bradley's.

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